Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) – The mutated “mighty rat”, caught on his muscle during a month-long stay at the International Space Station, has returned to Earth with torn bodybuilder physics, scientists reported Monday.
These findings promise to prevent muscle and bone loss in astronauts on long space travels such as the Mars mission, as well as those on Earth who are confined to bed or in need of a wheelchair.
A research team led by Dr. Se-Jin Lee of the Jackson Laboratory in Connecticut sent 40 young female black mice to the space station in December, departing from a SpaceX rocket.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lee said that 24 untreated rats lost muscle and bone mass in weight loss as expected – up to 18%.
But eight genetically engineered “mighty mice” retain their bulk twice as much. Their muscles looked comparable to the similar “mighty mice” that lagged behind at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
In addition, eight normal rats who received the treatment of “mighty mice” in space returned to Earth with dramatically larger muscles. Treatment involves blocking a pair of proteins that normally limit muscle mass.
The SpaceX capsule brought back all 40 rats parachuting off the coast of California in January in good condition. Lee said some normal mice were injected with the “mighty mouse” drug after returning and quickly built up more muscles than their untreated counterparts.
Scientists completed the experiment as the coronavirus was hitting the U.S.
Participating in the study, Lee’s wife, Dr. of Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. “The only silver lining of COVID is that we had time to write it very intensively,” said Emily German-Lee, of Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, to submit the results for publication. , Who participated in this study. Affiliated with the University of Connecticut.
When encouraged by their findings, the couple said that without serious side effects, a lot more work needs to be done before testing the drug on people to build muscles and bones.
“We have been away for years. “Everything is that way when you go from a mouse to a human study,” German-Lee said.
Lee said the experiment focused on other atoms and ways to give the right signal to the probe – “the confusion of money … a lot of things we want to pursue.” His next step: to send more “mighty mice” to the space station. Stay longer too.
Three NASA astronauts took care of the space rats, giving them body scans and injections: Christina Koch and Jessica Merr, who did the first all-female spacewalk last fall, and Andrew Morgan. They are listed as co-authors.
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